One of the world's great party cities is one year away from hosting the ultimate bash...but will Rio de Janiero be ready for its guests?

It's one year to go until the Rio Olympics, with the occasion to be marked both here and in Brazil.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee will hold its major annual fundraiser, the Prime Minister's gala dinner, in Auckland tonight and launch its official build-up campaign.

Rio's mayor Eduardo Paes, organising committee head Carlos Nuzman, and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach will hold a media conference, before an official countdown ceremony.

But while the city is promising a Games to remember, there's still plenty of work to do.

Our reporter in Rio, Laura McQuillan said while signifcant progress has been made on some venues, organisers are scrambling to ensure the event looks more like London than the near-disaster of Athens that critics are picking.

But she said the city's open water swimming and sailing venues may be beyond repair.

The pollution in Guanabara Bay has been earmarked as the most serious issue local organisers have to contend with.

The Olympic sailing venue has been labelled an "open sewer", while 32 tonnes of dead fish were removed from the lagoon where the rowing and canoeing events will be held.

However members of the New Zealand sailing team, currently in Rio for next week's test event, are pretty relaxed.

London 470 sailing gold medallist team-mate Polly Powrie says the Games will be there regardless, so it is was it is.

She says if they can clean it up a bit that would be great, but she can't see it happening.

Team mate Jo Aleh says there are signs of improvement from when she was last in Rio, but they can't expect it to be like New Zealand waters.

Aleh says there hadn't been much change in the last two years, but she was pleasantly surprised this time.

She says there's also a lot more police presence.

There will be an 85,000-strong security force targeting the city’s serious crime problem.

But for some New Zealand athletes, getting the chance to experience the party and potential pitfalls of Rio is still far from certain.

Commonwealth Games judo medalist Adrian Leat is desperate to be there and is still some way off doing so.

Leat has a love-hate relationship with his sport at times, juggling an architecture career with travel, training and competition - and getting little for it.

Judo received HPSNZ funding for the first time in December, with two instalments of $25,000. Of that, Leat might see "a grand or two"

Beating two opponents ranked in the world's top 32 in Glasgow last year is the first tick in the box towards qualifying for Rio.

Currently ranked around 60th in the world, Leat has to move into the top 22 to go to the Games, and will need to be on the podium at elite international events to gain those valuable ranking points.

But that challenge pales compared to the true adversity Leat has faced in the past 18 months.

His brother and training partner Alister committed suicide in February 2014 when the pair were in Bulgaria training towards the Commonwealth Games.

He almost gave up on the sport but was convinced to continue by his father and a close family friend, culminating in that Glasgow medal.

However Leat says there have been a lot of hard times since coming back. He says a lot of people don’t see the grief, the sadness that does affect him on a day-to-day basis.